LITECOIN: THE SILVER OF THE CRYPTON COINS

Since ancient times man has given a high value to precious metals, not only due to its physical beauty, but also to its process of obtaining, purification, durability and limited availability. The two most well-known are gold and silver, as they are metals that in times of crisis are often adopted by investors as 'asset haven' . That is to say, when predicting situations such as recessions or wars, for example, many investors prefer to position their capital on these metals and not in actions whose volatility could be triggered at any time.

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee compares Bitcoin and Litecoin to gold and silver in the world of cryptones . Not only because of their equivalence with respect to their market value, but because of the utility that people usually give. According to Lee's explanation in an interview , gold and bitcoin lend themselves more to be more applied as long-term investments and costly acquisitions, while silver and Litecoin provides greater fluidity, being more practical for its users in the everyday purchases.

THE ORIGIN OF LITECOIN

A graduate of MIT and a master's degree from the same institute in computer science, Charlie Lee was employed by reputed companies in the world of computing before devising Litecoin between Microsoft and Google. In October 2011, Lee created Litecoin while working for Coinbase, where he became Director of the Engineering Department while working in parallel with the development of Litecoin. Finally, Lee decided to give up his position in Coinbase to dedicate exclusively to the development of Litecoin, increasing the development to this blockchain and its projects.

After being amazed by the ideals that Bitcoin represented, Lee focused on creating a platform that would allow him both to support the development of Bitcoin and to improve the shortcomings that it presented. After having devised a name, Lee registered the domain Litecoin.org . October 5, 2011 Lee publishes his project on GitHub and 3 days later the first block in Litecoin chain had been registered. This is how Litecoin was born.

A very curious detail about the launch of Litecoin is that Charlie Lee, unlike Satoshi Nakamoto and many other cryptoactive developers today, did not keep a single LTC for himself , but decided to acquire them on his own as if I was one more user.

The mining algorithm used by Litecoin is scrypt , and its transactions are done in its own blockchain. The system has been receiving enhancements such as the activation of SegWit , which allows it to separate the confirmation signatures from the transaction data, resulting in greater speed and security.

Among Litecoin's main advantages over other blockchains, we can mention: its speed (it generates blocks every 2 ½ minutes, reducing the confirmation time of each transaction), its liquidity (with a production limit of 84 million coins in total), and its low transaction costs (one of the most economical in the market for crypto-currencies today).

Litecoin historical transaction cost graph. Courtesy of BitInfoCharts

In addition, Litecoin has shown a unified consensus and a group of developers committed to its work, which has allowed to test and implement various advances in its blockchain without having to be seen at crossroads as Bitcoin has been found lately.

HOW TO MINE LITECOIN?

The scrypt algorithm is ASIC-proof , which is why it was possible back then to detonate Litecoin with a common computer or some video card that could do the necessary processing. But nowadays the mining of this criptomoneda is forced to be carried out by means of ASIC devices if they want to see profits in this activity. These devices come prepared to mine a specific type of cryptomoneda or algorithm.

The most recognized currently may be the Antminer L3 + , produced by the company Bitmain. It offers a processing power of 504MH / s , consuming about 800W of electricity. Their value can range from $ 3,500 to $ 5,000, but in spite of this they usually disappear from the inventory of their sellers in a matter of hours sometimes. This is due to the high degree of profitability they offer, allowing the owner to recover their investment in a short time. The L3 + has competitors from other brands and models such as the Innosilicon A4 Dominator , BW-L21 from BW.com, and Futurebit USB miner Moonlander 2 .

Mining with ASIC, although expensive due to the high value of the equipment itself, is a bit simpler than the one made with graphics cards or processors, since the device comes fully armed ready to connect it to a source of power and to the Internet. On the other hand, the software that each uses usually comes with ASIC, saving the user some time of research on the ideal software.

As for mining alone or in a pool, it is usually recommended to pool mining when one has few equipment for this activity (unlike mining farms with large amounts of devices and their mining power is extraordinary). Among the most recommended pools in the world of LTC mining are Litecoinpool and Zpool .

LITECOIN AND THE MARKET

Litecoin has shown a standard behavior in the market taking into account the volatility that characterizes it per se, although according to many of its users is an undervalued cryptomoneda . That is to say that compared to the advantages offered by other cryptones, LTC should have a much higher value. It recently experienced an epic rebound, where after having remained stable in the range of $ 3.5 per unit since late 2015, began a rise in April this year that led it to reach a ATH of $ 92.07 and a market capitalization more than $ 4,000 billion , according to CoinMarketCap.

Litecoin Historical Price Chart. Courtesy of CoinMarketCap

All major exchange houses around the world already have exchange pairs for LTC. The ones that register a greater volume of transactions of this criptomoneda are Bithumb , OKCoin , GDAX , Bitfinex and Poloniex according to statistics of CoinMarketCap . In Latin America, Litecoin can be acquired through exchange houses like Bitinka and Uphold .

In addition to being able to be traded through exchange houses, the LTC can also be acquired through the network of bitcoin ATMs that offer access to this cryptononeda. It should be noted that LTC is the second cryptonnet with greater accessibility by this means, just after bitcoin.

WHERE TO STORE AND SPEND MY LITECOINS?

There are multiple physical and digital portfolios that support LTC. Among the most recognized of hardware or physical type are the following: Trezor , Ledger , KeepKey , and Opendime . While among the digital portfolios for LTC we have: Electrum-LTC , Exodus , Loaf wallet , and Jaxx .

The adoption of Litecoin as a method of payment around the world is a process that still has many steps ahead, but there are already sites where you can fully pay in LTC without problems , such as: BitRoad , an article store based in London, UK; All Things Luxury , a Canadian jewelry; and CryptoPet , an online pet store.

For a while, the network has been petitioning Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, for the company to begin accepting payments at Bitcoin and Litecoin. But to this day, no reactions have been announced regarding this request by the internet retail leader.

Currently Litecoin is in the fifth place of the most capitalized Cryptomoneda in the market. Their teams of developers have already achieved many of the milestones set out in its working path for 2017, the most remarkable are those who have been recently developed as are the Lightning Network , the atomic exchanges (Atomic Swaps), and confidential transactions . The last of these has not yet reached its stage of testing, but we have been able to appreciate tests already made of LN and atomic exchanges with encouraging results. The development of these tools has not been designed for the exclusive use of Litecoin and Bitcoin, but also seeks to integrate other blockchains and criptomonedas, allowing an integral growth in the adoption of this technology.